toledoblade.com --

DETROIT - Michigan voters yesterday passed a medical marijuana ballot measure - making the state the 13th to allow severely ill patients to use the illegal drug.

Another issue - on whether to loosen restrictions on embryonic stem cell research - was too close to call.

The medical marijuana issue - Proposal 1 - removes state penalties for registered patients to buy, grow, and use small amounts of marijuana.

Opponents couldn't derail the measure. In fact, only one state, South Dakota, has failed to OK a ballot attempt.

Of the 12 other states with medical marijuana laws, eight stemmed from ballot initiatives; four were enacted by state legislatures.

Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Bill Schuette, chairman of the opposition group Citizens Protecting Michigan's Kids, said he was disappointed with the outcome but not the effort.

"It appears we came up short," he said. "We waged a good campaign, a hard-fought campaign. But we were severely underfunded, and that's always a challenge."

The coalition included more than two dozen medical, law enforcement, anti-drug, and other organizations, including the Michigan State Medical Society, the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan and Citizens for Traditional Values.

Dianne Byrum, spokeswoman for the support group Citizens Protecting Michigan's Kids, called it a "victory for patients and their families."

"Voters knew right from the beginning the medical value of marijuana," she said.

Opponents launched their first TV ad last week that says so-called "pot shops" exploded in California when that state passed a medical marijuana law. Critics such as law enforcement officials say Michigan's law wouldn't prevent the proliferation of stores that grow and sell marijuana.

Backers responded that the Michigan measure was significantly different from California's law. Supporters' ads featured a woman who suffers from multiple sclerosis and experiences blindness from optic neuritis, and a retired physician who helped his wife by procuring medical marijuana to ease her symptoms of chemotherapy as she underwent treatment for ovarian cancer.

While the measure will remove state-level penalties for registered patients using marijuana, it won't create legal dispensaries for the drug. Nor will it affect the federal ban on marijuana, which makes possessing marijuana for any purpose illegal.

The stem-cell research ballot issue would change state law to allow people to donate embryos left over from fertility treatments for scientific research. Those embryos, which may or may not be suitable for implantation, would otherwise be thrown away as medical waste.

Some embryonic stem-cell research is allowed in Michigan, but only on stem-cell lines already established by researchers in other states. The state also allows research on adult stem cells and those taken from umbilical cords, but Proposal 2 advocates say embryonic research has more potential for medical breakthroughs.

Supporters also say the measure could put state researchers at the forefront of an emerging science that might discover cures for many illnesses, and say the state could lose researchers and research funds to states with less stringent policies. Opponents say the research is unethical because it involves the use and destruction of human embryos.

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